Infected Rain, Butcher Babies & Black Spikes concert

Last friday I had the opportunity to go to another amazing concert; with one of my favourite bands: Infected Rain; as well as Butcher Babies and Black Spikes. It was a truly amazing experience, and I can say with absolutely certainty it was the best concert I have gone to, so far! If I had to summarize the concert in only two words I would use “hard” and “heavy”! But I mean this is in every positive way possible.

It was an electrifying four hours of constant moshing, head banging and crowd surfing. By the end I was physically drained, sweating and without a voice. But mentally I was completely recharged!

I should probably start at the beginning; in essence it was a fairly calm friday evening, however it had been an exhausting week For a while I was even considering not going and having a calm evening at the house. Am I glad I didn’t do that and decided to go anyway!

The venue was located in an industrial district, this combined with it being the friday before the Easter weekend, made the roads and surroundings especially calm, the tall factory buildings standing dark like watchful giants. It felt a bit eery, walking through an industrial area without the usual bustling of trucks, machines and forklifts. For a while I was even wondering if I was in the right place… Just the wide concrete road, parked trucks and warehouses all around. Luckily I spotted some people dressed all in black, with hoodies and other band merch, so I knew I was in the right place.

After a short walk through some old warehouses and machinery halls, I found my way to the entrance. While the air was quite cool and even a bit on the colder side, outside; inside it was a comfortable temperature. Once I found my way into the main hall, there was a pleasant atmosphere of people waiting for the concert to start.

After a short wait, Black Spikes started the concert. A fairly new band from Lithuania, I had already heard a few of their songs on YouTube, so I was excited to see them live for the first time. They gave a really amazing performance and on top I have to give my compliments to the sound guys, they did an amazing job!

The vocals were exceptionally clear, while the guitars punched through the mix without being overwhelming. The drums where loud, but not dominating. What impressed me most was the bass; it sounded angry and was constantly growling through the crowd! The legs of my pants and the sleeves of my hoody where shaking and vibrating, every time a note was hit. I absolutely love it!

I could tell the guitarist and bassist were a bit uneasy on the stage, moving around constantly, almost being in each other’s way. This however did not take away from the performance. Despite very few people actually understanding Lithuanian, the lead singer was also able to rile up the crowd and get the whole audience moving.

The growling music combined with quite clean vocals, created for a nice contrast. While at other moments the music died down a bit, and made space for incredibly long screams!

After this performance, the crowd was already high-energy and hyped up, and the next performance was Butcher Babies. If you know anything about this band, is that they are really high intensity and high energy. Once they start there is no holding back!

They made an explosive start, and just kept it going until the end of their performance. All the while the crowd was getting more and more riled up and energetic. The mosh pit was definitely growing in size and intensity with each song played.

Eventually Heidi, the lead singer of Butcher Babies, asked everyone to make space, jumped into the middle of the crowd. Quickly a circle pit formed around her, pretty much involving the entire crowd. At the end of the performance she made the remark that she had never seen anyone going into the mosh pit with their wine glasses [They were those big beer glasses, they do look similar. Even more impressive, nothing got broken.].

Around this time the venue started feeling more like a sultry nightclub on a summer’s evening then a concert venue. The lights flashing, the temperature rising, the air heavy and thick, your heart beating with the baseline and the crowd moving around you in unison. Everything around you fading away for a while and time seems to slow down. One could, however, argue better music was being played than in the average night club.

They ended their performance with a heartfelt thank you to everyone for coming and helping her get through some rough times. Bringing an emotional version of their “Last December” track.

Last, but definitely not least, Infected Rain gave their performance. It was another high energy performance with a lot of moshing and crowd surfing! The high energy combined with the ever increasing heat and the high energy performance by Butcher Babies before, meant the crowd was going absolutely insane. Oftentimes the cheering was actually louder than the music!

They had some large screens, to go along with their performance. These visuals mostly showed glitch effects, to go along with their upcoming album, tying the entire performance together. Fortunately, these displays weren’t to distracting or used as a crutch for the show, but rather as an extra accent.

Infected Rain recently released a song together with Heidi from Butcher Babies, called “Realm of Chaos”. It was really nice to see them perform together in real life. Later they also played my favourite song “Orphan Soul”, and I was really happy to hear it once again!

At the end of the performance, they asked the entire crowd to split down the middle, Moving further and further, finally after a small countdown, the entire crowd rushed back together into a massive mosh pit!

After an amazing 4 hours of constant moshing and crowd surfing, the performance had to end. As you can guess the crowd wasn’t too happy with this and was chanting for one more song. Eventually they came back and played one more song, the crowd going absolutely crazy!

After a heartfelt thank you, the performance actually ended. After making my way outside, feeling the fresh night air felt really good. In a way I was happy to be outside, but on the other hand I was sad that the performance was over.